Does UptimeRobot monitor SSL certificate expiry?

Yes. UptimeRobot tracks certificate expiry and alerts you a configurable number of days before it lapses. It doesn't validate the full chain or watch Certificate Transparency logs the way Oh Dear does, but for expiry alerts it covers the essentials, including on its free tier.

Is Oh Dear worth paying for over UptimeRobot's free tier?

It depends on the sites. For high-volume, low-stakes monitoring, UptimeRobot's free tier is hard to beat. For business-critical sites where you want chain validation, broken-link and cron monitoring, and polished status pages, Oh Dear's per-site depth justifies the cost.

Which is better for an agency monitoring client sites?

Both are built primarily for watching your own sites. Agencies usually need white-label reports and SSL, domain, DNS, and email monitoring in one dashboard across many clients, which is what a purpose-built agency tool like VigilDog provides rather than a general uptime monitor.

Oh Dear vs UptimeRobot for SSL and Uptime Monitoring

VigilDog Team · September 29, 2026 · 7 min read

Oh Dear and UptimeRobot are two of the most popular ways to keep an eye on uptime and SSL certificates, but they're aimed at very different users. One optimizes for cheap, high-volume coverage; the other for depth on the sites that matter. This comparison walks through how they actually differ on certificates, alerting, status pages, and price, so you can pick the right one.

The short version: who each tool is for

Both Oh Dear and UptimeRobot monitor uptime and SSL certificates, but they come from opposite directions. UptimeRobot is the volume player, a generous free tier, dead-simple setup, and enough checks to cover a lot of sites cheaply. Oh Dear is the craftsman's tool, paid only, but it goes deeper on each site with checks UptimeRobot doesn't attempt, and it presents everything with more polish.

If you want the largest number of endpoints watched for the least money, UptimeRobot usually wins. If you want a richer picture of a smaller number of important sites, certificate health, broken links, scheduled-task monitoring, Oh Dear is the more thorough choice. The rest of this comparison is about where those differences actually bite.

SSL and certificate monitoring compared

Both tools will tell you when a certificate is about to expire, which is table stakes. The difference is depth. UptimeRobot monitors the expiry date and alerts you a configurable number of days out, solid, and enough for most people. Oh Dear goes further: it validates the whole certificate chain, warns on certificates that are expiring, and can watch Certificate Transparency logs so you're notified when a new certificate is issued for your domain, a useful signal for catching mis-issuance.

Expiry is the failure everyone remembers, but it's not the only way TLS breaks, a broken intermediate, a misordered chain, or a hostname mismatch can all serve users a browser warning while the certificate itself is technically still valid. If you want to sanity-check a certificate right now, our free SSL checker shows the chain and expiry for any host. And it's worth understanding why SSL monitoring differs from plain uptime monitoring: a site can be perfectly up and still be serving a bad certificate.

The TLS certificate chain of trust

Uptime checks, intervals, and alerting

UptimeRobot's free tier checks at 5-minute intervals; paid plans bring that down to 60 or 30 seconds. It covers HTTP(S), keyword, ping, port, and cron/heartbeat monitors, and alerts through email, SMS, push, Slack, and webhooks. It's a lot of monitoring for the price.

Oh Dear also checks uptime and, notably, treats a broken SSL certificate or a failing scheduled task as a form of downtime, it's checking whether the site is actually healthy, not just whether it returns a 200. Its alerting hits the usual channels (email, Slack, Discord, webhooks) and its notifications tend to carry more context about what specifically went wrong.

Status pages and the extras

Both offer hosted status pages, but Oh Dear's are more polished and configurable, and it bundles in monitoring features UptimeRobot simply doesn't have:

Broken-link and mixed-content scanning across your site.
Scheduled task (cron job) monitoring with expected-run windows.
DNS and domain-expiry checks.
Detailed performance and uptime history with timelines.

Pricing philosophy

UptimeRobot's pull is the free tier, you can monitor a real portfolio of sites without paying, and upgrade only when you need faster intervals or more monitors. Oh Dear has no permanent free tier (it offers a trial) and charges a flat monthly rate for a set of sites, betting that the extra depth is worth it for sites that matter.

For a hobby project or a long list of low-stakes endpoints, UptimeRobot's economics are hard to beat. For a business whose site going down, or serving a broken certificate, costs real money or credibility, Oh Dear's per-site depth is easier to justify. Neither is wrong; they're optimizing for different buyers.

Where a specialist tool fits, especially for agencies

Both tools are built for watching your own sites. If you're an agency monitoring dozens of client domains, the questions change: can you white-label the reports? Is domain expiry, SSL, DNS drift, and email authentication all in one place? Can a client get a branded status update without seeing another vendor's logo?

That's the gap VigilDog is built for, SSL, domain expiry, DNS and drift, and SPF/DKIM/DMARC deliverability monitoring under one roof, with white-label reports for agencies. If you're choosing between Oh Dear and UptimeRobot for a handful of your own sites, either is a fine pick; if you're monitoring a book of client domains and need to hand each one a clean, branded report, that's where a purpose-built agency tool earns its place.